Grassroots Power and Unintended Consequences

Update 11:53am: Komen has now reversed itself. Grassroots power wins!

UPDATE 11:58 am by Lowell: Perhaps we shouldn’t declare victory too soon?

There is only one way for us ordinary folks to fight against the rampant power of big money unleashed by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, plus the blatant influence on legislation by lobbyists with pockets full of campaign contributions. The many have to band together to defeat the powerful few with their numbers, and I’ve been heartened by a couple of incidents in the past few days.

After winning the Florida primary, Willard “Mitt” Romney called on his deep-pocket friends to donate $1 million to a fund to make President Obama a one-term president. The Obama campaign took that as a challenge and started a Two-Term Fund, hoping to raise $2 million. In the two days since, the campaign has raised almost $1.6 million from more than 38,000 people. That’s sure not what “Silver Foot in Mouth” Willard intended.

Also, a new, anti-choice vice president at the Susan G. Komen Foundation evidently engineered adoption of a new rule that effectively ended its funding to Planned Parenthood for breast health services to its clients. Planned Parenthood may have lost over $600,000 from Komen, but it has already received over $400,000 in small donations, plus two large donations totaling $500,000, easily overcoming the Komen action.

That’s grassroots power. This blog, itself, is a tribute to that power, and so was that “Rag Tag Army” of volunteers who convinced a military hero and writer to take on and defeat an incumbent Republican buffoon, George “Macaca” Allen. And, we aren’t finished.  “Macaca” is back, but then so are we.